City Link (company)

City Link Limited

Former type	Limited company
Industry	Courier
Fate	Administration
Founded	1969
Defunct	1 January 2015
Headquarters	Coventry, England
Key people	David Smith (Managing Director) Robert Peto (Finance Director)
Products	Freight Forwarding Services Logistics Services
Revenue	£306.9 million GBP(FY 2011)
Owner	Better Capital
Number of employees	2,727
Website	www.city-link.co.uk (dead link)

City Link was a British next day courier company based in Coventry, United Kingdom (1969–2015). City Link operated a delivery service in the UK including the Isle of Man from its hub in Coventry in the West Midlands although other offices existed in other areas of the country. On 24 December 2014, the company entered administration. Ernst & Young (EY) was appointed as the administrators and immediately ceased accepting parcels from customers.

City Link was founded in 1969 (as a subsidiary of Orbit Cargo Services Limited). It was created to provide a cross-town transfer service for Red Star Parcels (operated by British Rail). At the time, Red Star Parcels only travelled on direct passenger services, so a sender in Brighton could not despatch a parcel to Norwich, as a transfer had to be undertaken in London between London Victoria station and Liverpool Street station. In addition, the Red Star service was limited to station-to-station only and following increasing demand from its customers, City Link established a UK nationwide network of "Agents" to collect parcels from the local station and deliver to the consignee.

In 1989 the company was acquired by Securiguard Limited. On 20 November 2005 Initial City Link announced that as a part of its expansion programme, they were to ‘buy back’ the franchises. This was completed in March 2007 with the purchase of Tiger Haulage Ltd, City Link's Welwyn Garden City, Hemel Hempstead, Barking, Birmingham, Worcester, West Bromwich, Reading and High Wycombe franchises. At the time of purchase, Tiger Haulage was the largest franchisee of Initial City Link, operating 9 depots over 4 counties.

Exactly one year after Initial City Link announced its buy back scheme, Initial City Link finished negotiations with the shareholders of Target Express to purchase the company on 20 November 2006. Target was officially acquired and taken over by Initial City Link on 1 March 2007. As a part of its merger with Target Express, City Link was planning to close 42 of the 110 combined branches in the first half of 2008 to provide a single integrated network. However at the end of February 2008 managing director Petar Cvetkovic announced a suspension of further integration of Target Express depots until January 2009. The merger of the two units proved problematic (particularly due to depots running different computer systems), damaging profits at parent company Rentokil Initial. Rentokil turned down several offers for the loss-making unit in 2008, stating that it instead intended to turn around City Link's fortunes.